Manual sorting

A negligible amount of the world's waste is sorted in large mechanised processing plants. The sorting facilities of today have their limitations, including the large investment need, complex facilities, and limited ability to separate recyclable fractions. For example, in mixed-waste processing the amount returned as raw material is often modest. Instead, even in Europe a huge number of people are employed in manual sorting, picking usable raw materials off conveyors.

Manual sorting however has many problems, including exposure to microbes, dust, particulate matter, and chemicals, lacking ergonomy, risk of injury, and problems in motivation, the social problems present in many countries, and the high price and inefficiency of the process. Manual sorting does not seem to have any future. In the manual sorting of typical waste, only a couple of percent is reclaimed. An efficiency of 10 % in mixed-waste manual processing is an excellent achievement. Not to mention that EU regulation from 1975 in practice forbids manual sorting of waste.